“A Horse in the Moon” (Un cavallo nella luna)

Translated by Mary Ann Witt and Giovanni Santalucia

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “A Horse in the Moon” (“Un cavallo nella luna”), tr. Mary Ann Witt and Giovanni Santalucia. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

“A Horse in the Moon” (“Un cavallo nella luna”) was first published in the literary periodical Il Marzocco on June 23, 1907. A revised version then became the title story of a new miscellany collection, A Horse in the Moon (Un cavallo nella luna) published in Milan by Treves in 1918. Pirandello finally added it to the ninth Collection of his Stories for a Year, making it part of Donna Mimma in 1925 (Florence: Bemporad) along with nine other stories from A Horse in the Moon.

This story is one of many in which Pirandello juxtaposes two different realities to tragic effect. Like many of his tales of cultural miscommunication, it is set in Sicily and makes much of the stark contrast the island presents to the foreigner who ends up living there. This theme connects the story to other specifically Sicilian tales that explore cultural difference or the island’s “foreignness,” such as “Far Away” (“Lontano,” 1902) and “Sicilian Limes” (“Lumíe di Sicilia,” 1900), as well as his stories about the Sicilian sulfur mines, like “Fumes” (“Il fumo,” 1904) and “Formalities” (“Formalità,” 1904). In the case of “A Horse in the Moon,” the foreigner is a young Italian woman named Ida who has moved from the mainland to Sicily with her father, who is serving in the Italian army. Newly arrived, the colonel is not eager to allow his daughter to marry Nino, a local man from a prominent family, despite his superior wealth and social station. Already, then, the story is dramatizing the clash of two value systems, showing how a man who would be considered elite and highly eligible in one cultural context can be simultaneously looked down upon as uncivilized and unfitting by someone coming from outside that context. Indeed, the man is depicted as something of a brute and the incarnation of a barely-restrained sexual desire, to the point that he becomes physically ill from his unbridled passion – a form of desire that his new spouse seems unable to comprehend. Indeed, his carnal, passionate nature is contrasted against her ethereal detachment from the ways of the world, which is made concrete in the key encounter at the heart of the story when the two come across the corpse-like figure of a dying horse who has been left by the local villagers to be picked at by the crows. Ida is horrified and insists that they do something about it, revealing her lack of understanding about how people behave here in Sicily; at the same time, in Nino’s eyes, her compassion for the horse contrasts with her lack of consideration for his own (animal) needs, from which he is suffering in a way that has manifested itself as a serious sickness. The title image of the horse in the moon encapsulates the grim carnality of the scene, but it also reflects something of the grotesque monstrosity that Ida’s sheltered view imputes to carnal reality as such. In this regard, the story intersects with a number of others in Pirandello’s corpus, from “Moon Fever” (“Male di luna,” 1913) to “In Corpore Vili” (1902), where the body and its forms of sinful sickness take on symbolic dimensions.

The Editors

In September, on that high plateau of dry blue clay overhanging the African sea, the countryside, already burned by the rages of long summer days, looked sad. It was still bristling with blackened stubble, sparse almond trees, and a few centenarian stumps of Saracen olive trees scattered here and there.[1] Nonetheless, the newlyweds had decided to spend at least the first few days of their honeymoon in this place, out of consideration for the groom.

The wedding feast, prepared in one of the rooms of the ancient, solitary villa, was not too enjoyable for the guests.

None of them were able to overcome the embarrassment, or rather bewilderment, at the appearance and behavior of that fat young man, barely twenty years old, with his burning face, whose small, black, shiny eyes darted here and there like those of a madman.[2] He no longer understood anything; he neither ate nor drank and grew more and more purple, almost black.

It was well known that, seized by a frenzied love for the woman who was now seated next to him—the bride—he had done foolish things. He had even tried to kill himself—he, extremely rich, the only heir to the age-old Berardi family—for a woman who, after all, was nothing more than the daughter of an infantry colonel who had come to Sicily with his regiment a year before. Prejudiced against the inhabitants of the island, the colonel did not want to agree to a marriage that would practically leave his daughter among savages.[3] 

A sense of bewilderment at the appearance and demeanor of the groom grew among the guests, all the more so by contrast with the air of the young bride. She was still truly a child, vivacious, fresh, and carefree. She seemed to shrug off every troubling thought with a graceful liveliness that was at once naive and cunning. Cunning, however, in the manner of a mischievous but ignorant girl. Having been raised from childhood without a mother, she seemed completely unprepared for marriage. At a certain point, after the wedding feast was over, everyone laughed and then grew sober when she turned to the groom and exclaimed:

“Oh goodness, Nino, why are you squinting like that? Let me… no, you’re burning! Why are your hands so hot? Feel, Papa, feel how his hands are burning. Could he have a fever?”

On pins and needles, the colonel hastened the departure of the guests from the villa in order to put an end to the spectacle which struck him as indecent. Everyone took a seat in one of the six carriages. The carriage in which the colonel was seated next to the groom’s mother—herself a widow—went at a leisurely pace down the avenue. It lagged a little behind because the newlyweds—she on one side of the coach and he on the other, one holding her father’s hand and one holding his mother’s—wanted to follow it for a short stretch on foot, up to where the highway that led to the distant city began. At that point the colonel bent over and kissed his daughter on her head, coughed, and stammered:

“Goodbye, Nino.”

“Goodbye, Ida,” said the groom’s mother on the other side, laughing, and the carriage set off briskly to join those of the guests.[4]

The two newlyweds remained for a short time to watch it leave. Really, only Ida watched, because Nino didn’t see anything, didn’t feel anything, his eyes fixed on his bride standing alone with him, finally his, all his… but what was she doing? Crying?

“My papa,” said Ida, waving farewell with her handkerchief, “There, do you see him? He, too…”

“But not you, Ida… my Ida…” Nino stammered, almost sobbing, trying to hug her, trembling.

Ida pushed him away.

“No, leave me alone, please.”

“I want to dry your eyes…”

“No thanks, dear, I can dry my own eyes…”

Nino stood there awkwardly, watching her, his face pitiable, his mouth half-open. Ida finished drying her eyes, then asked:

“What’s the matter with you? You’re trembling all over. Goodness, Nino, don’t look at me like that! You make me laugh, and once I start laughing, I never stop! Wait, I’ll snap you out of it.”

Softly, she put her hands on his temples and blew into his eyes. At the touch of those fingers, at the breath from those lips, he felt his legs buckle; he was just about to fall to his knees, but she held him up, breaking out in roaring laughter.

“On the highway? Are you crazy? Let’s go, let’s go! There, look at that little hill! We’ll still be able to see the carriages. Let’s go look!”

And she dragged him away by his arm, impetuously.

From the entire surrounding countryside, where many weeds and other scattered plants had long since dried up, an almost ancient, dense wind mingled with the thick heat from the small piles of fermenting manure on the fallow fields, and the sharp fragrances of live mint and sage. Only he noticed that dense wind, that thick heat, those sharp fragrances. Ida, running behind the thick hedges of prickly pear, through the bristling yellowish clumps of burnt stubble, heard, for her part, how gleefully the woodlarks shrieked in the sun and how, in the sweltering heat of the plains, in the bewildering silence, the foreboding crowing of roosters echoed from faraway barnyards. She felt overwhelmed, now and then, by the cool, fresh breeze that came from the nearby sea, rustling the tired leaves of the almond trees, already thinning and yellowing, and the thick, pointed, ashy leaves of the olive trees.[5]

They soon reached the little hill, but he could hardly stand any longer, almost falling to pieces from the run. He wanted to sit and, pulling her by the waist, tried to make her sit next to him, but Ida shielded herself from him.

“Let me look around first.”

She was beginning to feel restless but didn’t want to show it. Annoyed by his odd persistence, she could not—she would not—stay still. She wanted to keep running, farther and farther away. She wanted to shake him, distract him, and distract herself as well, as long as the day lasted.

Beyond the hill stretched an endless plain, in a sea of stubble, in which the black remains of burn-beating snaked here and there. Here and there, too, a few tufts of caper or licorice broke up the bristling yellow. Far, far below, almost to the other distant bank of that vast yellow sea, one could see the roofs of cottages among tall, dark poplar trees.

Well, Ida then suggested to her husband they go as far as those cottages. How long would it take? An hour, or a little more. It was barely five o’clock. Back at the villa, the servants must still be cleaning up. The two of them would be back before evening.

Nino tried to resist her idea, but she pulled him by his hands, made him jump to his feet, and then she took off running down the short slope of that little hill and then through that sea of stubble, nimble and quick as a fawn. Unable to keep up with her, growing more and more red in the face as if dazed, sweating, panting, and running, he called out for her to give him her hand.

“At least give me your hand! At least your hand!” he kept on screaming.

Suddenly, she came to a stop and let out a scream. A flock of crows had risen before her, cawing. Ahead, stretched out on the ground, was a dead horse. Dead? No, no, he wasn’t dead: his eyes were open. My God, what eyes! He was a skeleton. And those ribs! Those flanks!

Nino caught up, huffing and wheezing.

“Let’s go… right away! Let’s go back!”

“He’s alive, look!” Ida shouted, with disgust and pity. “He’s raising his head… my God, what eyes! Look, Nino!”

“Of course,” he said, still panting. “They came to dump him here. Leave him alone; let’s get out of here! What is that odor? Don’t you smell that the air is already…”

“And those crows?” she exclaimed with a shudder of horror. “Those crows that will eat him alive?”

“But please, Ida!” he begged, his hands joined.

“Nino, enough!” she shouted back, highly irritated at seeing him so pleading and melancholy. “Answer me: and if they eat him alive?”

“How do you expect me to know how they’ll eat him? They’ll wait…”

“For him to die here, of hunger, of thirst?” she continued, her face contorted with compassion and horror. “Because he’s old? Because he’s no longer useful? Oh, the poor creature! What a disgrace! What a disgrace! What kind of heart do these villagers have? What kind of heart do you people have?”

“Excuse me,” he said, becoming impatient, “you feel such pity for an animal…”

“I shouldn’t feel it?”

“But you don’t feel any for me!”

“And are you an animal? Are you perhaps dying of hunger and thirst, thrown down in the midst of the stubble? Listen… oh, look at the crows, Nino, up above… look… they’re circling. Oh, what a horrible, shameful, monstrous thing. Look… oh, poor creature… he’s trying to get up! Nino, he’s moving… maybe he can still walk… Nino, come on, let’s help him… hurry!”

“But what do you expect me to do?” he burst out in exasperation. “Shall I drag him behind? Carry him on my shoulders? This horse, that’s all we needed. All we needed! How do you expect him to walk? Don’t you see that he’s half dead?”

“What if we brought him something to eat?”

“And also to drink!”

“Oh, how mean you are, Nino!” Ida said with tears in her eyes.

And she leaned over, overcoming her disgust, in order to softly pat the head of the horse who had barely lifted himself from the ground, kneeling with his two hooves in front of him. Even in his abject, infinite misery, he showed a last remnant of noble beauty in his neck and head.[6]

Nino, either because his blood was boiling, or because of bitter spite, or because he was sweating from the run, felt a sudden chill and shuddered. His teeth began to chatter as a strange tremor passed through his whole body; he instinctively pulled up the lapel of his jacket and, with his hands in his pockets, bundled up, gloomy, and despairing, went over to sit on a rock.

The sun had already set. One could hear in the distance the rumble of passing carriages on the highway.

Why were his teeth chattering like that? And yet, his forehead was burning, his blood was boiling in his veins, and his ears were roaring. He seemed to hear the ringing of faraway bells. All that anxiety, that pang of anticipation, her fickle coldness, that run, and now that horse, that damned horse… oh God, was it a dream? A nightmare? Was it fever? Maybe a worse sickness. Yes! What darkness, God, what darkness! Or had his vision also clouded? He couldn’t talk, he couldn’t shout. He called her, “Ida! Ida!” but his voice no longer came out of his throat, dry as a cork.

Where was Ida? What was she doing?

She had escaped to the distant village to ask for help for that horse, without thinking that it was the villagers themselves who had dragged that dying beast here.

He remained there alone, sitting on the rock, completely overwhelmed by that growing tremor. Bent over, keeping everything completely confined within himself, perched like a great owl with its wings folded, he suddenly saw something that seemed to him to be… yes, of course, no matter how atrocious, no matter how much like a vision of another world—the moon. A big moon that slowly arose from that yellow sea of stubble. And, black against that enormous, hazy copper disk, the emaciated head of that horse still waited with its neck stretched out. Perhaps it would wait forever, a black silhouette cut from that copper disk, while the circling crows cawed high in the sky.

When Ida returned, disillusioned, indignant, hopeless in the vast expanse, crying, “Nino, Nino,” the moon had already risen; the horse had again collapsed, as if dead; and Nino—where was Nino? Oh, there he was, also lying on the ground.

Had he fallen asleep there?

She ran to him. She found him gasping for air. His face, almost black, was on the ground, his eyes tight and swollen, engorged.

“Oh God!”

And she looked around, almost in a daze; she opened her hands, in which she held a few dry beans that she had brought from the village to feed to the horse. She looked at the moon, then at the horse, then at the ground, where this man also lay as if dead. She felt faint, suddenly overwhelmed by the doubt that everything she saw was real. Terrified, she fled towards the villa, crying out for her father, asking him to take her away from here, oh God! Away from that man who was gasping for air… who knows why! Away from that horse, away from that crazy moon, away from those crows cawing in the sky… away, away, away…